Worthy of a "Dishonorable Mention" ?

I will admit a bit of town bias here. A view that our town is better then others. It has a lot to offer and people would not be moving here if it was so bad.

Sadly others do not feel the same way, and their views can be seen here.

I was on a forum I go to regularly and they mentioned speed traps. I figured I would see if they had the few spots I see officers in wait listed. The two spots at the Nissan Blvd./ Lowry come to mind, and the spot in front of the Smyrna High School. I see police cars there often. I have not seen any police cars parked on Murfreesboro Road on the North side of hilltop waiting for speeders to crest the hill for a while. I think construction removed that one.

The first thing I noticed was that Smyrna was one of the top four in our state. This from the The Worst Speed Trap Cities In The United States page.

TENNESSEE

Worst Speedtrap: Nashville
Dishonorable Mention: Memphis, Piperton, Smyrna

Smyrna has its own page of listed "speed traps". I put quotations around the word for a specific reason. Their views that it is a speedtrap does not mean it is.

A good example is this comment on the "Smyrna High School"

I have been pulled over at this location twice and given a ticket. My first ticket here was the very first weekend I moved back to TN. Once for going 53 in a 45 and once for going 60 in a 45.

I guess it is a "speed trap" because he got caught.

Now if I read the city budget that can be downloaded in PDF form the cities revenue as listed on page 19 for the year 2006-2007 is 24,562,312, and the traffic courts listed on page 18 brought in 698,272(not counting traffic school, late fees and penalties). A small part of the general revenue of the city.

From this article on other cities a budget comment can shine a little light on the subject.

More than a dozen Missouri municipalities receive between a quarter and half of their entire budget from traffic tickets. The practice is so widespread that the legislature placed the state's "Director of Revenue" in charge of the speeding ticket point system.

In the north St. Louis County town of Bel-Ridge, for example, police issue the equivalent of three speeding tickets for each resident annually. About $699,000 of the town's total budget of $1.4 million comes from these traffic fines.

Since Smyrna is no wheres near that level, I can be comfortable in saying that Smyrna is not close to being a speed trap.

What part of your city budget is based on traffic court fines?